Education

Math lesson.

Organization: Colégio Franciscano Nossa Senhora Aparecida (CONSA)

Location: São Paulo, Brazil

Customer need: Personal safety, Property and asset protection, Compliance and liability, Perimeter and area security

São Paulo, Brazil, 2020

When it was time to expand from 16 analog cameras to 175 IP cameras, this educational institution did the math and made a decision based on storage savings.

Mission

Colégio Franciscano Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Consa) depended on 16 analog cameras with low image quality to ensure the safety of students, staff, and visitors. Considering their new requirements for image quality, the school was interested in discreetly increasing the areas under surveillance, using 100% high-quality IP devices. The question remained: how to make this project feasible without generating a high volume of data?

Solution

In a short time, Consa increased the number of cameras more than tenfold. During all phases, project deployment was quick and easy thanks to the efforts of Added, the integrator responsible for dimensioning the project during the pre-sales period using AXIS Site Designer. That way, when it was time to install the equipment, most of the key information had already been mapped out.

In addition, the biggest technological differential for the school was the use of Axis Zipstream. This technology allows the image volume from 175 IP video cameras to be stored and processed on the school’s server with additional compression to the H.264 standard. Axis Zipstream saved the institution more than 30% in terms of processing and storage resources.

Result

The new system allowed the school to work in new ways: to proactively manage incidents based on data, allowing faster responses. In practice, the images not only enhanced property security but also help to locate objects lost by students. And compared to the previous system, the new technology reduced image search times by more than half, enabling the security team to make the best use of their time. The new system also increased productivity in all processes involving the video monitoring system, including problem prevention, incident resolution, and searching for images for analysis.

We made a very assertive decision in choosing the product and partner to use in implementing this project. We believe it was a success, and we have plans to expand the technology to other units in Brazil.

Franklin Machado

Information Technology and Infrastructure Manager at Consa.

10x more security

“When we needed a certain image, when it was retrieved, the quality was low and didn’t help resolve incidents,” recalls Franklin Machado, Information Technology and Infrastructure Manager at Colégio Franciscano Nossa Senhora Aparecida.

In order to be more effective, the system needed to cover all entrances/exits, patio area, hallways, pickup/ drop off zone, parking garage, the perimeter of the property, the Consa Theater, playground, gymnasium, laboratories, and library.

Faced with the challenges of this expansion, which could weigh down the project by requiring more storage, Added proposed turning to Axis Zipstream. Axis Zipstream technology preserves all the important forensic details while reducing bandwidth and storage requirements by an average of 50% or more. “Using Zipstream is very important, because the client had already bought a server for processing images. Added showed the customer that the Axis solution would allow them to use the server that the customer already had,” reveals Fábio Novaes, the Infrastructure Manager at Added.

Proven day-to-day effectiveness

“We managed to win the customer’s trust through the quality of the Axis products, the company’s warranty and support services, and their pioneering developments in image processing, together with the Added team’s expertise,” says Fábio Novaes.

The client realized that the images could also solve issues of incidents with students, staff, or visitors, such as lost objects and movement analysis. “It’s common for students to forget their things around the school. The technological resources reduced image search times drastically, optimizing the time resource of our security team,” comments Franklin Machado. It’s also possible to use camera images as evidence in court. This represents an assurance for parents, staff, and the educational institution itself, who are able to present material evidence in cases involving incidents inside and outside the school.

Lessons for the future

Colégio Franciscano Nossa Senhora Aparecida saw that it was possible to reduce the number of operators thanks to the event presets configured on the cameras, since the system itself brings up the relevant event information according to the system settings.

With such a positive track record, the images demonstrated their value and opened up room for larger projects and new technologies, such as the Axis IP Audio solutions that are currently being reviewed. “We set up a monitoring environment that has increasingly contributed to the safety of everyone who enters our facilities. Despite the good coverage of spaces at the school, we are still working on expansion projects for this unit, as well as for other schools in our network outside São Paulo,” Machado announced.

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